Heading to the Crazy Mountains in Montana for elk and deer in 2 weeks. Any sugestions on areas to check out. Never hunted there but love to check out new country. Any help would be appreciated. Or if there are better General License areas to check out I am open.
Crazy Mountains
- Thread starter fred8801
- Start date
RobG
Well-known member
Make sure you have a landownership map - there is a lot of private land inside of the National Forest boundaries that you can't hunt. It makes it pretty hard to hunt there actually...
belly-deep
Active member
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2009
- Messages
- 3,459
They need to do a few land swaps or something.
I hunted the opening weekend several years ago in the north end of the Crazy Mtn and we scouted out a large herd up in cottonwood creek. The next day there was some major hunting pressure and it forced the elk down lower to the north to private land. It dumped a big snow and we went down and hunted deer. If you had access to private it might be really good or we thought about hunting the Clyde Park side. Good luck.
CabinFever
Member
Many of the elk moved down onto private early in rifle season with some big snows, though I'm sure there's some bulls holding out up higher. They do get a lot of pressure, but if you can get away from the major access points you could do ok. They aren't my choice for late season elk.
Mule Deer
New member
Good luck. Not sure what is going on in that area this year. It's almost impossible to hunt with all the private.
http://fwp.mt.gov/news/newsReleases/hunting/nr_2050.html
http://fwp.mt.gov/news/newsReleases/hunting/nr_2050.html
mdunc8
Well-known member
Far from the truth
Mule Deer
New member
Not really. Especially with all the hunters this year. All the deer and elk get pushed to private. Unless you get permission it's extremely hard. Otherwise you are taking your turn with other guys shuffling in and out of public chunks or slogging around in the snow in the forest.
Not impossible, but not far from impossible either. Ive taken 2 deer from there in 3 days hunting it since I started hunting Montana. It's somewhere I spend a evening or morning while driving through home or further east., so I know it's not impossible, but I do know how hard it is. One was a really nice 150+ whitey.
mdunc8
Well-known member
Your post made it sound like you were insinuating that hunting (i.e., gaining access to public or BMAs) was nearly impossible. There's plenty of country over there to hunt.
CabinFever
Member
There's some areas in the Crazies that have less access, but there's certainly plenty of public land
